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RALPH WALDO EMERSON 




ANNERS ^ *^ ^ *^ ^ ^ *^ ^^ 



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RALPH WALDO^MERSON 



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PMadcIphia Jt jt ^ j* j* 

HENRY ALTEMUS 



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Copyrighied, 1896, by Henry Altemus. 



HBNRY ALTKMUS, MANUFACTUKBK, 
FHILADBLPHIA. 



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MANNERS. 



** How near to good is what is fair! 
Which we no sooner see, 
But witli the lines and outward air 
Our senses taken be. 

Again youselves compose, 
And now put all the aptness on 
Of Figure, that Proportion 

Or Color can disclose ; 
That if those silent arts were lost. 
Design and Picture, they might boast 

From you a newer ground, 
Instructed by the heightening sense 
Of dignity and reverence 

In their true motions found." 

Ben Johnson. 



MANNERS. 



Half the world, it is said, knows not how the 
other half live. Our Exploring Expedition saw 
the Feejee islanders getting their dinner off human 
bones ; and they are said to eat their own wives 
and children. Tlie husbandry of the modern in- 
habitants of Gournou (west of old Thebes) is 
philosophical to a fault. To set up their house- 
keeping, nothing is reqnisite but two or three 
earthen pots, a stone to grind meal, and a mat 
which is the bed. The house, namely, a tomb, is 
ready without rent or taxes. No rain can pass 
through the roof, and there is no door, for there is 
no want of one, as there is nothing to lose. If the 
house do not please them, they walk out and enter 
another, as there are several hundreds at their 
command. " It is somewhat singular," adds Bel- 
zoni, to whom we owe this account, '' to talk of 
happiness among people who live in sepulchres, 
among the corpses and rags of an ancient nation 
which they know nothing of." In the deserts of 
Borgoo, the rock-Tibboos still dwell in caves, like 
cliff-swallows, and the language of these negroes 

(5) 



6 MANNERS, 

is compared by their neighbors to the shrieking of 
bats, and to the whistling of birds. Again, the 
Bornoos have no proper names ; individuals are 
called after their height, thickness, or other acci- 
dental quality, and have nicknames merely. But 
the salt, the dates, the ivory, and the gold, for 
which these horrible regions are visited, find their 
way into countries where the purchaser and con- 
sumer can hardly be ranked in one race with these 
cannibals and man-stealers ; countries where man 
serves himself with metals, wood, stone, glass, 
gum, cotton, silk, and wool ; honors himself with 
architecture ; Avrites laws, and contrives to exe- 
cute his will through the hands of many nations ; 
and, especially, establishes a select society, run- 
ning through all the countries of intelligent men, 
a self-constituted aristocracy, or fraternity of the 
best, which, without written law or exact usage of 
any kind, perpetuates itself, colonizes every new- 
planted island, and adopts and makes its own 
whatever personal beauty or extraordinary native 
endowment anywhere appears. 

What fact more conspicuous in modern history 
than the creation of the gentleman ? Chivalry is 
that, and loyalty is that, and, in English literature, 
half the drama, and all the novels, from Sir Philip 
Sidney to Sir Walter Scott, paint this figure. The 
word gentleman^ which, like the word Christian, 
must hereafter characterize the present and the 
few preceding centuries, by the importance at- 
tached to it, is a homage to personal and incom- 
municable properties. Frivolous and fantastic 



MANNERS. 7 

additions have got associated with the name, but 

the steady interest of mankind in it must be attrib- 
uted to the valuable properties which it desig- 
nates. An element which unites all the most 
forcible persons of every country ; makes them 
intelligible and agreeable to each other, and is 
somewhat so precise, that it is at once felt if an 
individual lack the masonic sign, cannot be any 
casual product, but must be an average result of 
the character and faculties universally found in 
men. It seems a certain permanent average ; as 
the atmosphere is a permanent composition, whilst 
so many gases are combined only to be decom- 
pounded. Comme il faiit, is the Frenchman's 
description of good society, as ive must be. It is 
a spontaneous fruit of talents aiid feelings of pre- 
cisely that class who have most vigor, who take 
the lead in the world of this hour, and, though 
far from pure, far from constituting the gladdest 
and highest tone of human feeling, is as good as 
the whole society permits it to be. It is made of 
the spirit, more than of the talent of men, and is 
a compound result, into which every great force 
enters as an ingredient, namely, virtue, wit, beauty, 
wealth, and power. 

There is something equivocal in all the words in 
use to express the excellence of manners and social 
cultivation, because the quantities are fluxional, 
and the last effect is assumed by the senses as the 
cause. The word gentleman has not any correla- 
tive abstract to express the quality. Gentility is 
mean, and gentilesse is obsolete. But we must 



8 MANNERS. 

keep alive iu the vernacular, the distinction h^- 
t\veenfai<hion^a word of narrow and often sinister 
meaning, and the heroic character which tlie gen- 
tleman imports. The usual words, liowever, must 
be respected: they will be found to contain the 
root of the matter. The point of distinction in 
all this class of names, as courtesy, chivalry, fash- 
ion, and the like, is, that the flower and fruit, not 
the grain of the tree, are contemplated. It is 
beauty which is the aim this time, and not worth. 
The result is now in question, although our words 
intimate well enough the popular idling, that the 
appearance supposes a substance. (The gentleman 
is a man of truth, lord of his own actions, and ex- 
pressing that lordship in his behavior, not in any 
manner dependent and servile either on persons, 
or opinions, or possessions^ Beyond this fact of 
truth and real force, the word denotes good-nature 
or benevolence : manhood first, and then gentle- 
ness. The popular notion certainly adds a condi- 
tion of ease and fortune ; but that is a natural 
result of personal force and love, that they should 
possess and dispense the goods of the world. In 
times of violence, every eminent person must fall 
in with many opportunities to approve his stout- 
ness and worth ; therefore every man's name that 
emerged at all from the mass in the feudal ages, 
rattles in our ear like a flourish of trumpets. But 
personal force never goes out of fashion. That is 
still paramount to-day, and, in the moving crowd 
of good society, the men of valor and reality are 
known, and rise to their natural place. The com- 



MANNERS. 9 

petition is transferred from war to politics and 
trade, but tiie personal force appears readily 
enough in these new arenas. 

Power first, or no leading class. In politics 
and in trade, bruisers and pirates are of better 
promise than talkers and clerks. God knows that 
all sorts of gentlemen knock at the door ; but 
whenever used in strictness, and with any 
emphasis, the name will be found to point at 
original energy. It describes a man standing in 
his own right, and working after untaught 
methods. In a good lord, there must first be a 
good animal, at least to the extent of yielding the 
incomparable advantage of animal spirits. The 
luling class must have more, but they must have 
these, giving in every company the sense of power, 
which makes things easy to be done which daunt the 
wise. The society of the energetic class, in their 
friendly and festive meetings, is full of courage, 
and of attempts, which intimidate the pale scholar. 
The courage which girls exhibit is like a battle of 
Lundy's Lane, or a sea-fight. The intellect relies 
on memory to make some supplies to face these 
extemporaneous squadrons. But memory is a 
base mendicant with basket and badge, in the 
presence of these sudden masters. The rulers of 
society must be up to the work of the world, and 
equal to their versatile office : men of the right 
Csesarean pattern, who have great range of affinity. 
I am far from believing the timid maxim of Lord 
Falkland, ("that for ceremony there must go two 
to it ; since a bold fellow will go through the cun- 



to MANNERS, 

ningest forms,") and am of opinion that the 
gentleman is the bold fellow whose forms are 
not to be broken through; and onl}^ that plenteous 
nature is rightful master, which is the complement 
of whatever person it converses with. .^ My gen- 
tleman gives the law where he is ; he will outpray 
saints in chapel, outgeneral veterans in the field, 
and outshine all courtesy in the hall. He is good 
company for pirates, and good with academicians ; 
so that it is useless to fortify yourself against him ; 
he has the private entrance to all minds, and I 
could as easily exclude myself, as him.; The fa- 
mous gentlemen of Asia and Europe have been of 
this strong type : Saladin, Sapor, the Cid, Julius 
Caesar, Scipio, Alexander, Pericles, and the lord- 
liest personages. They sat very carelessly in their 
chairs, and were too excellent themselves, to value 
any condition at a high rate. 

A plentiful fortune is reckoned necessary, in 
the popular judgment, to the completion of this 
man of the world : and it is a material deputy 
which walks through the dance which the first has 
led. Money is not essential, but this wide affinit}^ 
is, which transcends the habits of clique and caste, 
and makes itself felt by men of all classes. If the 
aristocrat is only valid in fashionable circles, and 
not with truckmen, he will never be a leader in 
fashion ; and if the man of the people cannot 
speak on equal terms with tlie gentleman, so that 
the gentleman shall perceive that he is already 
really of his own order, he is not to be feared. 
Diogenes, Socrates, and Epaminondas are gen- 



MANNERS. II 

tlemen of the best blood, who have chosen the 
condition of poverty, when that of wealth was 
equally open to them. I use these old names, but 
the men I speak of are my contemporaries. For- 
tune will not supply to every generation one of 
these well-appointed knights, but every collection 
of men furnishes some example of the class : and 
the politics of" this country, and the trade of every 
town, are controlled by these hardy and irrespon- 
sible doers, who have invention to take the lead, 
and a broad sympathy which puts them in fellow- 
ship with crowds, and makes their action popular. 
The manners of this class are observed and 
caught with devotion by men of taste. The as- 
sociation of these masters with each other, and 
with men intelligent of their merits, is mutually 
agreeable and stimulating. The good forms, the 
happiest expressions of each, are repeated and 
adopted. By swift coiisent, everything super- 
fluous is dropped, everything graceful is renewed. 
(Fine manners show themselves formidable to the 
uncultivated man.^ They are a subtler science of 
defence to parry and intimidate ; but once matched 
by the skill of the other party, they drop the 
point of the sword, — point? and fences disappear, 
and the youth finds himself in a more transparent 
atmosphere, wherein life is a less troublesome 
game, and not a misunderstanding rises between 
the players. Manners aim to facilitate life, to get 
rid of im})ediments, and bring the man pure to 
energize. They aid our dealing and conversation, 
as a railway aids travelling, by getting rid of all 



12 MANNERS. 

avoidable obstructions of the road, and leaving 
nothing to be conquered but pure space. These 
forms very soon become fixed, and a fine sense of 
propriety is cultivated with the more heed, that it 
becomes a badge of social and civil distinctions. 
Thus grows up Fashion, an equivocal semblance, 
the most puissant, the most fantastic and frivo- 
lous, the most feared and followed, and which 
morals and violence assault in vain. 

There exists a strict relation between the class 
, of power, and the exclusive and polished circles. 
The last are always filled or filling from the first. 
The strong men usually give some allowance even 
■ to the petulances of fashion, for that affinity they 
vfind in it. Napoleon, child of the revolution; de- 
stroyer of the old noblesse, never ceased to court 
the Faubourg St. Germain : doubtless with the 
feeling, that fashion is a homage to men of his 
stamp. Fashion, though in a strange way, re- 
presents all manly virtue. It is virtue gone to 
seed : it is a kind of posthumous honor. It does 
not often caress the great, but the children of the 
great : it is a hall of the Past. It usually sets its 
face against the great of this hour. Great men 
are not commonly in its halls: they are absent in 
the field : they are working, not triumphing. 
Fashion is made up of their children ; of those 
who, through the value and virtue of somebody, 
have acquired lustre to their name, marks of dis- 
tinction, means of cultivation and generosity, and, 
in their physical organization, a certain health and 
excellence, which secures to them, if not the high- 



MANNERS. 13 

est power to work, yet high power to eiijoy. The 
chiss of power, the working heroes, the Cortez, the 
Nelson, the Napoleon, see that this is the festivity 
and permanent celebration of such as they ; that 
fashion is funded talent; is Mexico, Marengo, and 
Trafalgar beaten out thin ; that the brilliant 
names of fashion run back to just such busy 
names as their own, fifty or sixty years ago. They 
are the sowers, their sons shall be the reapers, and 
tlieAr sons, in the ordinary coarse of things, must 
yield the possession of the harvest to new compet- 
itors with keener eyes and stronger frames. The 
city is recruited from the country. In the year 
1805, it is said, every legitimate monarch in 
Europe was imbecile. The city would have died 
out, rotted, and exploded, long ago, but that it 
was reinforced from the fields. It is only country 
which came to town day before yesterday, that is 
city and court to-day. 

Aristocracy and fashion are certain inevitable 
results. These mutual selections are indestruct- 
ible. If they provoke anger in the least favored 
class, and the excluded majority revenge them- 
selves on the excluding minority, by the strong 
hand, and kill them, at once a new class finds it- 
self at the top, as certainl}^ as cream rises in a 
bowl of milk : and if the people should destroy 
class after class, until two men only were left, one 
of those would be the leader, and would be invol- 
untarily served and copied by the other. You 
may keep this minority out of sight and out of 
mind, but it is tenacious of life, and is one of the 



14 MANNERS, 

estates of the realm. I am the more struck with 
this tenacity, when I see its work. It respects 
the administration of such unimportant matters, 
that we should not look for any durability in its 
rule. We sometimes meet men under some strong 
moral influence, as, a patriotic, a literary, a relig- 
ious movement, and feel that the moral sentiment 
rules man and nature. We think all other dis- 
tinctions and ties will be slight and fugitive, tliis 
of caste or fashion, for example ; yet come from 
year to year, and see how permanent that is, in 
this Boston or New York life of man, wliere, too, 
it has not the least countenance from the law of 
the land. Not in Egypt or in India a firmer or 
more impassable line. Here are associa»tions whose 
ties go over, and under, and through it, a meet- 
ing of merchants, a military corps, a college class, 
a fire-club, a professional association, a political, a 
religious convention ; — the persons seem to draw 
inseparably near; yet, that assembly once dispersed, 
its members will not in the year meet again. 
Each returns to his degree in the scale of good 
society, porcelain remains porcelain, and earthen 
earthen. The objects of fashion may be frivolous, 
or fashion may be objectless, but the nature of 
this union and selection can be neither frivolous 
nor accidental. Each man's rank in that perfect 
graduation depends on some symmetry in his 
structure, or some agreement in his structure to 
the symmetry of society. Its doors unbar instan- 
taneously to a natural claim of their own kind. 
A natural gentlemen finds his way in, and \\ ill 



MANNERS. 15 

keep the oldest patrician out, who has lost his in- 
trinsic rank. Fashion understands itself; good- 
breeding and personal superiority of whatever 
country readily fraternize with those of every 
other. The chiefs of savage tribes have distin- 
guished themselves in London and Paris, by the 
purity of their tournure^^/ 

(To say what good 01 fashion we can, — it rests ^ 
on reality, and hates nothing so much as pretend- 
ers ;— )to exclude and mystify pretenders, and 
send them into everlasting ' Coventry,' is its de- 
light. We contemn, in turn, every other gift of 
men of the world ; but the habit even in little and 
the least matters, of not appealing to any but our own 
sense of propriety, constitutes the foundation of 
all chivalry. There is almost no kind of self-reli- 
ance, so it be sane and proportioned, which fashion 
does not occasionally adopt, and give it the free- 
dom of its saloons. A sainted soul is always 
elegant, and, if it will, passes unchallenged into 
the most guarded ring. But so will Jock the 
teamster pass, in some crisis that brings him 
thither, and find favor, as long as his head is not 
giddy with the new circumstance, and the iron 
shoes do not wish to dance in waltzes and cotil- 
lons. For there is nothing settled in manners, but 
the laws of behavior yield to the energy of the in- 
dividual. The maiden at her first ball, the coun- 
tryman at a city dinner, believes that there is a 
ritual according to which every act and compli- 
ment must be performed, or the failing party must 
be cast out of this presence. Later, they learn 



1 6 MANNERS. 

that good sense and character make their own 
forms every moment, and speak ur abstain, take 
wine or refuse it, stay or go, sit in a chair or 
sprawl with children on the floor, or stand on their 
head, or what else soever, in a new and aboriginal 
way : and that strong will is always in fashion, 
let wlio will be unfashionable. All that fashion 
demands is composure, and self-content. A circle 
of men perfectly well-bred would be a company of 
sensible persons, in which every man's native 
manners and character appeared. If the fashion - 
ist have not this quality, he is nothing. We are 
such lovers of self-reliance, that we excuse in a 
man many sins, if he will show us a complete sat- 
isfaction in his position, wliicli asks no leave to be, 
of mine, or any man's good opinion. But any 
deference to some eminent man or woman of the 
world forfeits all privilege of nobilit}^ He is an 
underling : I have nothing to do with him ; I will 
speak with his master. A man should not go 
where he cannot carry his whole sphere or society 
with him, — not bodily, the whole circle of his 
friends, but atmospherically. He should preserve 
in a new company the same attitude of mind and 
reality of relation, which his daily associates draw 
liim to, else he is shorn of his best beams, and will 
be an orphan in the merriest club. "If you could 

see Vich Ian Vohr with his tail on ! " But 

Vich Ian Vohr must always carry his belongings 
in some fashion, if not added as honor, then sev- 
ered as disgrace. 
J There will always be in society certain persons 



MANNERS. 17 

who are mercuries of its apjjrobation, and whose \ 
glance will at any time determine for the curious 
their standing in the world. These are the cham- 
berlains of the lesser gods. Accept their coldness 
as an omen of grace with the loftier deities, and 
allow them all their privilege. They are clear in 
their office, nor could they be thus formidable, 
without their own merits. But do not measure 
the importance of this class by their pretension, 
or imagine that a fop can be the dispenser of 
honor and shame. They pass also at their just 
rate : for how can they otherwise, in circles which 
exist as a sort of herald's office for the sifting of 
character ? 

As the first thing man requires of man is reality, 
so, that appears in all the forms of society. We 
pointedly, and by name, introduce the parties to 
each other. Know you before all heaven and 
earth, that this is Andrew, and this is Gregory; — 
they look each other in the eye ; they grasp each 
other's^ hand, to identify and signalize each other. 
It is a great satisfaction. A gentleman never 
dodges : his eyes look straight forward, and he as- 
sures the other part3% first of all, that he has been 
met. For what is it that we seek, in so many 
visits and hospitalities? Is it your draperies, pic- 
tures, and decorations? Or, do we not insatiably 
ask. Was a man in the house ? I may easily go 
into a great household where there is much sub- 
stance, excellent provision for comfort, luxury, 
and taste, and yet not encounter there any Am- 
phitryon, who shall subordinate these appendages. 



i8 MANNERS, 

I may go into a cottage, and find a farmer who 
feels that he is tlie man I have come to see, and 
fronts me accordingly. It was therefore a very 
natural point of old feudal etiquette, that a gen- 
tleman who received a visit, though it were of his 
sovereign, should not leave his roof, but should 
wait his arrival at the door of his house. No 
house, though it were the Tuileries, or the Escu- 
rial, is good for anything without a master. And 
3^et we are not often gratified by this hospitality. 
Everybody we know surrounds himself with a 
fine house, fine books, conservatory, gardens, 
equipage, and all manner of toys, as screens to in- 
terpose between himself and his guest. Does it 
not seem as if man was of a very sly, elusive na- 
ture, and dreaded nothing so much as a full ren- 
contre front to front with his fellow? It were 
unmerciful, I know, quite to abolish the use of 
these screens, which are of eminent convenience, 
whether the guest is too great, or too little. We 
call together many friends who keep each other in 
play, or, by luxuries and ornaments we amuse the 
young people, and guard our retirement. Or if, 
perchance, a searching realist comes to our gate, 
before whose eye we have no care to stand, then 
again we run to our curtain, and hide ourselves as 
Adam at the voice of the Lord God in the garden. 
Cardinal Caprara, the Pope's legate at Paris, de- 
fended himself from the glances of Napoleon, by 
an immense pair of green spectacles. Napoleon 
remarked them, and speedily managed to rally 
them off: and yet Napoleon, in his turn, was not 



MANNERS. 19 

great enough with eight hundred thousand troops 
at his back, to face a pair of freeborn eyes, but 
fenced himself with etiquette, and within triple 
barriers of reserve : and, as all the world knows 
from Madame de Stael, was wont, when he found 
himself observed, to discharge his face of all ex 
pression. But emperors and rich men are by no 
means the most skilful masters of good manners. 
No rent-roll nor array-list can dignify skulking and 
dissimulation: and the first pointof courtesy must 
always be truth, as really all the forms of good- 
breeding point that way. 

I have just been reading, in Mr. Hazlitt's trans- 
lation, Montaigne's account of his journey into 
Italy, and am struck with nothing more agreeably 
than the self-respecting fashions of the time. His 
arrival in each place, the arrival of a gentleman 
of France, is an event of some consequence. 
Wherever he goes, he pays a visit to whatever 
prince or gentleman of note resides upon his road, 
as a duty to himself and to civilization. When 
he leaves any house in which he has lodged for a 
few weeks, he causes his arms to be painted and 
hung up as a perpetual sign to the house, as was 
the custom of gentlemen. 

The complement of this graceful self-respect, 
and that of all the points of good breeding I most 
require and insist upon, is deference. I like that 
every chair should be a throne, and hold a king. 
I prefer a tendency to stateliness, to an excess of 
fellowship. Let the incommunicable objects of 
nature and the metaphysical isolation of man 



20 MANNERS. 

teach us independence. ' Let us not be too much 
acquainted. I would have a man enter his house 
through a hall filled with heroic and sacred sculp- 
tures, that he might not want the hint of tran- 
quillity and self-poise. We should meet each morn- 
ing, as from foreign countries, and spending the 
day together, should depart at night, as into for- 
eign countries. In all things I would have the 
island of man inviohxte. Let us sit apart as the 
gods, talking from peak to peak all around Olym- 
pus. No degree of affection need invade this 
religion. This is myrrh and rosemary to keep the 
other sweet. Lovers should guard their strange- 
ness. If they forgive too much, all slides into 
confusion and meanness. It is easy to push this 
deference to a Chinese etiquette ; but coolness and 
^sence of heat and haste indicate fine qualities. . 
^A gentleman makes no noise : a lady is serene, j) 
Proportionate is our disgust at those invaders who 
fill a studious house with blast and running, to 
secure some paltry convenience. Not less I dis- 
like a low sympathy of each with his neighbor's 
needs^ Must v/e have a good understanding with 
one another's palates? as foolish people who have 
lived long together, know when each wants salt 
or sugar. I pray my companion, if he wishes for 
bread, to ask me for bread, and if he wishes for 
sassafras or arsenic, to ask me for them, and not to 
hold out his plate, as if I knew already. Every 
natural function can be dignified by deliberation . 
and privacy. Let us leave hurr}^ to slaves. The 
compliments and ceremonies of our breeding 



MANNERS. 21 

should signify, however remotely, the recollection 
of the grandeur of our destiny. 

The flower of courtesy does not very well bide 
handling, but if we dare to open another leaf, and 
explore what parts go loits conformation, we shall 
find also an intellectual quality. To tlie leaders 
of men, the brain as well as the flesh and the heart 
must furnish a proportion. Defect in manners is 
usually the defect of fine percc'ptions. Men are 
too coarsely made for the delicacy of beautiful 
carriage and customs. It is not quite sufficient to 
good-breeding, a union of kindness and independ- 
ence. We im})eratively require a perception of, 
and a homage to beauty in our companions. Other 
virtues are in request in the field and workyard, 
but a certain degree of taste is not to be spared in 
those we sit with. I could better eat with one who 
did not respect the truth of the laws, than with a 
sloven and unpresentable person. Moral qualities 
rule the world, but at short distances the senses 
are despotic. The same discrimination of fit and 
fair runs out, if with less rigor, into all parts of 
life. The average spirit of the energetic class is 
good sense, acting under certain limitations and 
to certain ends. It entertains every natural gift. 
Social in its nature, it respects everything which 
tends to unite men. It delights in measure. The 
love of beauty is mainly the love of measure or 
proportion. The person who screams, or uses the 
superlative degree, or converses with heat, puts 
whole drawing-rooms to flight. If you wish to be 
loved, love measure. You must have genius, or a 



22 MANNERS. 

prodigious usefulness, if you will hide the want 
of measure. This perception comes in to polish 
and perfect the parts of the social instrument. 
Society will pardon much to genius and special 
gifts, but, being in its nature a convention, it 
loves what is conventional, or what belongs to 
coming together. That makes the good and bad 
of manners, namely, what helps or hinders fellow- 
ship. For, fashion is not good sense absolute, but 
relative ; not good sense private, but good sense 
entertaining company. It hates corners and sharp 
points of character, hates quarrelsome, egotistical, 
solitary, and gloomy people ; hates whatever can 
interfere with total blending of parties ; whilst it 
values all peculiarities as in the highest degree 
refreshing, which can consist with good fellow- 
ship. And besides the general infusion of wit to 
heighten civility, the direct splendor of intellect- 
ual power is ever welcome in fine society as the 
costliest addition to its rule and its credit. 

The dry light must shine in to adorn our festi- 
val, but it must be tempered and shaded, or that 
will also offend. Accuracy is essential to beauty, 
and quick perceptions to politeness, but not too 
quick perceptions. One may be too punctual and 
too precise. He must leave the omniscience of 
business at the door, when he comes into the pal- 
ace of beauty. Society loves Creole natures, and 
sleepy, languishing manners, so that they cover 
sense, grace, and good-will ; the air of drowsy 
strength, which disarms criticism ; perhaps, be- 
cause such a person seems to reserve himself for 



MANNERS, 23 

the best of the game, and not spend himself on 
surfaces ; an ignoring eye, which does not see the 
ainioyances, shifts, and inconveniences, that cloud 
the brow and smother the voice of the sensitive. 

Therefore, besides personal force aiid so much 
perception as constitutes unerring taste, society 
demands in its patrician class another element 
already intimated, which it significantly terms 
good-nature, expressing all degrees of generosity, 
from the lowest willingness and faculty to oblige, 
up to the heights of magnanimity and love. In- 
sight we must have, or we shall run against one 
another, and miss the way to our food; but intel- 
lect is selfish and barren. The secret of success 
in society is a certain heartiness and sympathy. A 
man who is not happy in the company cannot find 
any word in his memory that will fit the occasion. 
All his information is a little impertinent. A man 
who is happy there finds in every turn of the 
conversation equally lucky occasions for tlie intro- 
duction of that which he has to say. The favor- 
ites of society, and what it calls wliole souls, are 
able men, and of more spirit than Avit, who have 
no uncomfortable egotism, but who exactly fill the 
hour and the company, contented and contenting, 
at a marriage or a funeral, a ball or a jury, a water- 
party or a shooting-match. England, which is rich 
in gentlemen, furnished, in the beginning of the 
present century, a good model of that genius 
which the world loves, in Mr. Fox, who added to 
his great abilities the most social disposition, and 
real love of men. Parliamentary history has few 



24 MANNERS. 

better passages than the debate, in which Burke 
and Fox separated in the House of Connnons ; 
when Fox urged on his old friend the claims of 
old friendship with such tenderness, that the house 
was moved to tears. Another anecdote is so close 
to my matter, that I must hazard the stor3\ A 
tradesman who had long dunned him for a note 
of three hundred guineas, found him one day 
counting gold, and demanded payment: "No," 
said Fox, '' I owe this money to Sheridan : it is a 
debt of honor : if an accident should happen to 
me, he has nothing to show." '' Then," said the 
creditor, " I change my debt into a debt of honor," 
and tore the note in pieces. Fox thanked the 
man for his confidence, and paid him, saying, " his 
debt was of older standing, and Sheridan must 
wait." Lover of liberty, friend of the Hindoo, 
friend of the African slave, he possessed a great 
personal popularity ; and Napoleon said of him on 
the occasion of his visit to Paris, in 1805, "Mr. 
Fox will always hold the first place in an assem- 
bly at the Tuileries." 

We may easily seem ridiculous in our eulogy 
of courtesy, whenever we insist on benevolence as 
its foundation. The painted phantasm Fashion 
rises to cast a species of derision on what we say. 
But I will neither be driven from some allovv-ance 
to Fashion as a symbolic institution, nor from the 
belief that love is the basis of courtesy. We 
must obtain that., if we can ; but by all means we 
must affirm thU, Life owes much of its spirit to 
these sharp contrasts. Fashion which affects to 



MANNERS. 25 

be honor is often, in all men's experience, only a 
ballroom code. Yet, so long as it is the highest 
circle, in the imagination of the best heads on 
the planet, there is something necessary and ex- 
cellent in it ; for it is not to be supposed that 
men have agreed to be the dupes of anything 
preposterous ; and the respect which these mys- 
teries inspire in the most rude and sylvan charac- 
ters, and the curiosity with which details of high 
life are read, betray the universality of the love 
of cultivated manners. I know that a comic dis- 
parity would be felt, if we should enter the ac- 
knowledged 'first circles,' and apply these terrific 
standards of justice, beauty, and benefit, to the 
individuals actually found there. Monarchs and 
heroes, sages and lovers, these gallants are not. 
Fashion has many classes and man}' rules of pro- 
bation and admission ; and not the best alone. 
There is not only the right of conquest, which 
genius pretends, — the individual, demonstrating 
his natural aristocracy best of the best ; — but less 
claims will pass for the time ; for Fashion loves 
lions, and points, like Circe, to her horned com- 
pany. This gentleman is this afternoon arrived 
from Denmark ; and that is my Lord Ride, who 
came yesterday from Bagdat; here is Captain 
Friese, from Cape Turnagain ; and Captain 
Symmes, from the interior of the earth ; and 
Monsieur Jovaire, who came down this morning 
iu a balloon; Mr. Hobnail, the reformer; and 
Reverend Jul Bat, who has converted the whole 
torrid zone in his Sunday school; and Signer 



26 MANNERS. 

Torre del Greco, who extinguished Vesuvius by 
pouring into it the Bay of Naples ; Spahi, the 
Persian ambassador ; and Tul Wil Shan, the 
exiled nabob of Nepaul, whose saddle is the new 
moon. — But these are monsters of one day, and 
to-morrow will be dismissed to their holes and 
dens ; for, in these rooms, every chair is waited 
for. The artist, the scholar, and, in general, the 
clerisy, wins its way up into these places, and gets 
represented here, somewhat on this footing of 
conquest. Another mude is to pass through all 
the degrees, spending a year and a day in St. 
Michael's Square, being steeped in Cologne water, 
and perfumed, and dined, and introduced, and 
properly grounded in all the biography, and poli- 
tics, and anecdotes of the boudoirs. 

Yet these fineries may have grace and wit. 
Let there be grotesque sculpture about the gates 
and offices of temples. Let the creed and com- 
mandments even have the saucy homage of par- 
ody. The forms of politeness universally express 
benevolence in superlative degrees. What if they 
are in tlie mouths of selfish men, and used as 
means of selfishness ? What if the false gentle- 
man almost bows the true out of the world? 
What if the false gentleman contrives so to ad- 
dress his companion, as civilly to exclude all 
others from his discourse, and also to make them 
feel excluded? Real service will not lose its 
nobleness. All generosity is not merely French 
and sentimental ; nor is it to be concealed, that 
living blood and a passion of kindness does at 



MANNERS. 27 

last distinguish God's gentleman from Fashion's. 
The epitaph of Sir Jenkin Grout is not wholly 
unintelligible to the present age. '' Here lies 8ir 
Jenkin Grout, who loved his friend, and persuadetl 
his enem}^ : what his mouth ate, his hand paid 
for: what his servants robbed, he restored: if a 
woman gave him pleasure, he supported her in 
pain : he never forgot his children : and whoso 
touched his finger, drew after it his whole body." 
Even the line of heroes is not utterly extinct. 
There is still ever some admirable person in plain 
clothes, standing on the wharf, who jumps in to 
rescue a drowning man ; there is still some absurd 
inventor of charities; some guide and comforter 
of runaway slaves ; some friend of Poland ; some 
Philhellene ; some fanatic who plants shade-trees 
for the second and third generation, and orchards 
when he is grown old ; some well-concealed piety ; 
some just man happy in an ill-fame ; some youth 
ashamed of the favors of fortune, and impatiently 
casting them on other shoulders. And these are 
the centres of society, on which it returns for 
fresh impulses. These are the creators of Fash- 
ion, which is an attempt to organize beauty of 
behavior. The beautiful and the generous are, in 
the theory, the doctors and apostles of this church : 
Scipio, and the Cid, and Sir Philip Sidney, and 
Washington, and every pure and valiant heart, 
who Avorshipped Beauty by word and by deed. 
The persons who constitute the natural aristoc- 
racy are not found in the actual aristocracy, or, 
only on its edge ; as the chemical energy of the 



28 MANNERS. 

spectrum is found to be greatest just outside of 
the spectrum. Yet that is the infirmity of the 
seneschals, who do not know their sovereign, 
when he appears. The tlieory of society supposes 
the existence and sovereignty of these. It di- 
vines afar off their coming. It says with the elder 
gods,— 

" As Heaven and Earth are fairer far 
Than Chaos and blank Darkness, though once chiefs; 
And as we show beyond that Heaven and Earth, 
In form and shape compact and beautiful; 
So, on our heels a f resh'perfection treads ; 
A power, more strong in beauty, born of us. 
And fated to excel us, as we pass 
In glory that old Darkness : * 

for, 'tis the eternal law, 

That first in beauty shall be first in might." 

Therefore, within the ethnical circle of good 
society, there is a narrower and higher circle, con- 
centration of its light, and flower of courtesy, to 
which there is always a tacit appeal of pride and 
reference, as to its inner and imperial court, the 
parliament of love and chivalry. And this is 
constituted of those persons in whom heroic dis- 
positions are native, with the love of beauty, the 
delight in society, and the power to embellish the 
passing day. If the individuals who compose the 
purest circles of aristocracy in Europe, the guarded 
blood of centuries, should pass in review, in such 
manner as that we could, at leisure, and critically 
inspect their behavior, we might find no gentle- 
man, and no lady; for, although excellent speci- 
mens of courtesy and high-breeding would gratify 



MANNERS, 2g 

US in the assemblage, in the particulars we should 
detect offence. Because, elegance comes of no 
breeding, but of birth. There must be romance 
of character, or the most fastidious exclusion of 
impertinencies will not avail. It must be genius 
which takes that direction : it must be not cour- 
teous, but courtesy. High behavior is as rare in 
fiction as it is in fact. Scott is praised for the 
fidelity with which he painted the demeanor and 
conversation of the superior classes. Certainl}*, 
kings and queens, nobles and great ladies, had 
some right to complain of the absurdity that had 
been put in their mouths, before the days of 
Waverly ; but neither does Scott's dialogue bear 
criticism. His lords brave each other in smart epi- 
grammatic speeches, but the dialogue is in 
costume, and does not please on the second read- 
ing: it is not warm with life. In Shakespeare 
alone, the speakers do not strut and bridle, the 
dialogue is easily great, and he adds to so many 
titles that of being the best-bred man in England, 
and in Christendom. Once or twice in a life-time 
we are permitted to enjoy the charm of noble 
manners, in the presence of a man or woman wlio 
have no bar in their nature, but whose character 
emanates freely in their word and gesture. A 
beautiful form is better than a beautiful face ; a 
beautiful behavior is better than a beautiful form : 
it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures : 
it is the finest of the fine arts. A man is but a 
little thing in the midst of the objects of nature, 
yet, by the moral quality radiating from his 



30 MANNERS. 

countenance, he may abolish all considerations of 
magnitude, and in his manners equal the majesty 
of the world. I have seen an individual, whose 
manners, though wholly within the conventions of 
elegant society, were never learned there, but 
were original and commanding, and held out pro- 
tection and prosperity ; one who did not need the 
aid of a court-suit, but carried the holiday in his 
eye ; who exhilarated the fancy by flinging wide 
the doors of new modes of existence ; who shook 
off the captivity of etiquette, with happy, spirited 
bearing, good-natured and free as Robin Hood ; 
yet with the port of an emperor, — if need be, 
calm, serious, and fit to stand the gaze of millions. 
The open air and the fields, the street and 
public chambers, are the places where Man exe- 
cutes his will ; let him yield or divide the sceptre 
at the door of the house. Woman, with her 
instinct of behavior, instantly detects in man a 
love of trifles, any coldness or imbecility, or, in 
short, any want of that large, flowing, and mag- 
nanimous deportment, which is indispensable as 
an exterior in the hail. Our American institu- 
tions have been friendl}^ to her, and at this 
moment I esteem it a chief felicity of this countr}-, 
that it excels in women. A certain awkward 
consciousness of inferiority in the men may give 
rise to the new chivalry in behalf of Woman's 
Rights. Certainly, let her be as much better 
placed in the laws and in social forms as the most 
zealous reformer can ask, but I confide so entirely 
in her inspiring and musical nature, that I believe 



MANNERS. 31 

only herself can show us how she shall be served. 
The wonderful generosity of her sentiments raises 
her at times into heroical and godlike regions, and 
verifies the pictures of Minerva, Juno, or Polym- 
nia; and, by the firmness with which she treads 
her upward path, she convinces the coarsest cal- 
culators that another road exists, than that which 
their feet know. But besides those who make 
good in our imagination the place of muses and of 
Delphic Sibyls, are there not women who fill our 
vase with wine and roses to the brim, so that the 
wine runs over and fills the house with perfume ; 
who inspire us with courtesy ; who unloose our 
tongues, and we speak ; who anoint our eyes, and 
we see ? We say things we never thought to 
have said ; for once, our walls of habitual reserve 
vanished, and left us at large ; we were children 
playing with children in a wide field of flowers. 
Steep us, we cried, in these influences, for days, 
for weeks, and we shall be sunny poets, and will 
write out in many-colored words the romance that 
you are. Was it Hafiz or Firdousi that said of 
his Persian Lilla, She was an elemental force, and 
astonished me by her amount of life, when I saw 
her day after day radiating, every instant, redun- 
dant joy and grace on all around her. She was a 
solvent powerful to reconcile all heterogeneous 
persons into one society : like air or water, an ele- 
ment of such a great range of affinities, that it 
combines readily with a thousand substances. 
Where she is present, all others will be more than 
they are wont. She was a unit and whole, so 



32 MANNERS. 

that whatsoever she did, became her. She had too 
much sympathy and desire to please, than that 3 ou 
could say, her manners were marked with dignity; 
yet no princess could surpass her clear and erect 
demeanor on each occasion. Slie did not study 
the Persian grammar, nor the books of the seven 
poets, but all the poems of the seven seemed to 
be written upon her. For, though the bias of her 
nature was not to thought, but to sympathy, 
yet was she so perfect in her own nature, as to 
meet intellectual persons by the fulness of her 
heart, warming them by her sentiments ; believ- 
ing, as she did, that by dealing nobly with all, all 
would show themselves noble. 

I know that this Byzantine pile of chivalry or 
Fashion, which seems so fair and picturesque to 
those who look at the contemporary facts for 
science or for entertainment, is not equally pleas- 
ant to all spectators. The constitution of our 
society makes it a giant's castle to the ambitious 
youth who have not found their names enrolled in 
its Golden Book, and whom it has excluded from 
its coveted honors and privileges. They have yet 
to learn that its seeming grandeur is shadowy and 
relative: it is great by their allowance : its proud- 
est gates will fly open at the approach of their 
courage and virtue. For the present distress, how- 
ever, of those who are predisposed to suffer from 
the tyrannies of this caprice, there are eas}^ reme- 
dies. To remove your residence a couple of 
miles, or at most four, will commonly relieve the 



MANNERS. 33 

most extreme susceptibility. For, the advantages 
which fashion values are plants which thrive in 
very confined localities, in a few streets, namely. 
Out of this precinct, they go for nothing; are of 
no use in the farm, in the forest, in the market, in 
war, in the nuptial society, in the literary or 
scientific circle, at sea, in friendship, in the heaven 
of thought or virtue. 

But we have lingered long enough in these 
painted courts. The worth of the thing signified 
must vindicate our taste for the emblem. Every- 
thing that is called fashion and courtesy humbles 
itself before the cause and fountain of honor, 
creator of titles and dignities, namely, the heart 
of love. This is the royal blood, this the fire, 
which, in all countries and contingencies, will 
work after its kind, and conquer and expand all 
that approaches it. This gives new meanings to 
every fact. This impoverishes the rich, suffering 
no grandeur but its own. What is rich ? Are 
you rich enough to help anybody ? to succor the 
unfashionable and the eccentric ? rich enough to 
make the Canadian in his wagon, the itinerant with 
his consul's paper which commends him " To the 
charitable," the swarthy Italian with his few 
broken words of English, the lame pauper hunted 
by overseers from town to town, even the poor in- 
sane or besotted wreck of man or woman, feel the 
noble exception of your presence and your house, 
from the general bleakness andstoniness ; to make 
such feel that they were greeted with a voice 
which made them both remember and hope? 



34 MANNERS. 

What is vulgar, but to refuse the claim on acute 
and conclusive reasons? What is gentle, but to 
allow it, and give their heart and yours one holi- 
day from the national caution ? Without the rich 
heart, wealth is an ugly beggar. The king of 
Schiraz could not afford to be so bountiful as 
the poor Osman who dwelt at his gate. Os- 
man had a humanity so broad and deep, 
that although his speech was so bold and free 
with the Koran, as to disgust all the dervishes, 
yet was there never a poor outcast, eccentric, or 
insane man, some fool who had cut off his beard, 
or who had been mutilated under a vow, or had a 
pet madness in his brain, but fled at once to him, 
— that great heart lay there so sunny and hospit- 
able in the centre of the country, — that it seemed 
as if the instinct, of all sufferers drew them to his 
side. And the madness which lie harbored, he 
did not share. Is not this to be rich ? this only 
to be rightly rich? 

But I shall hear without pain, that I play the 
courtier very ill, and talk of that which I do not 
well understand. It is easy to see, that what is 
called by distinction society and fashion, has good 
laws as well as bad, has much that is necessary, 
and much that is absurd. Too good for banning, 
and too bad for blessing, it reminds us of a tradi- 
tion of the pagan mythology, in any attempt to 
settle its character. ' I overheard Jove, one day,' 
said Silenus, ' talking of destroying the earth ; 
he said, it had failed ; they were all rogues and 
vixens, who went from bad to worse, as fast as the 



^ &!)= \"^ 



MANNERS. 35 

days succeeded each other. Minerva said, she hoped 
not ; they were only ridiculous little creatures, 
with this odd circumstance, that they had a blur, 
or indeterminate aspect, seen far or seen near ; if 
you called them bad, they would appear so ; if 
you called them good, they would appear so ; and 
there was no one person or action among them, 
which would not puzzle her owl, much more all 
Olympus, to know whether it was fundamentally 
bad or good.* 



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